Video game design

Hey Veeky Forums so I've really been interested in learning in creating a video game. Nothing fancy just something to get my foot in the door for a side project. Is there any good books/videos for people who want to get into creating video games? I have some experience with programming (python and MATLAB). Where should I start and what software is good for beginners?

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yessss code video a video game in Matlab pl0x

Just download Unity and start dicking around. Try to make a simple platformer. Make sure you use actual programming and not the pre-made code buttons.

Right now you can actually sell unity games and make some money on Steam so it's an okay work medium for somebody that just wants to try it out. Veeky Forums has a general for game developers so they might have more specific advice.

I know you can't use MATLAB for much, I was just making the point that I have experience with programming.

Don't listen to this guy code everything yourself from the ground up, make a fucking awesome game

Thanks alot! I really appreciate the info. Do you think buying a book would be beneficial? Or should I just dick around as you said and hope for the best?

I'm just wanting to start off slow and work my way up. This is honestly just a side project I would like to work on and I have always wanted to make a simple video game.

Yeah true, but coding the engine and everything would be dope right? There are guides on how to do it
I remember a guide on how to code a complete game in a year (with every day planned out) in some C language (C++?), It was a learn-how-to-code thing
Unity is definitely better but I doodled with pygame a bit (I'm not really a coding person guy)

Nobody ever does this and succeeds. You just end up wasting literally years of your life and making something worse than Flash.

There are enough online resources. I suggest just trying to do the built-in tutorials for Unity so you can learn the basics. It uses C# which is close enough to python it shouldn't be much of a transition for you.

Generally if you have a problem you can just google it and instantly get an answer because C# is insanely popular. The best way to improve at code is to just do it IMO

Yeah that would be really badass, it would also help strengthen my programming skills. Like I said, I appreciate any suggestions, I just want to know the best route to go about it. Any books you know of that would be good for me?

sorry no

The problem with making your own engine is first of all, there's no benefit. No matter what kind of game you want to make, there's an existing engine that will be better. Secondly, nobody else is working on it so you can't get help from others. Third, it's going to have compatibility problems because there's no way in hell you're going to be able to personally check if it works on every kind of hardware and operating system combination out there and debug it. And finally, unless you're a coding God it will probably be less optimized than what already exists.

It's just completely wasted effort. This is like if somebody asked how they should write an essay and you suggesting they start out by chopping down a tree and making paper from wood pulp to write on

I just checked out the Unity software and I must say this looks pretty exciting. As for the programming, besides creating a video game, I also want to practice programming and I feel like this is a great opportunity to do just that.

Veeky Forums-science.wikia.com/wiki/Computer_Science_and_Engineering#Game_Development

Don't tell me that wouldn't be badass as fuck

Spending a lot of time making something worse than what is readily available for free doesn't seem particularly badass

No I mean chopping down a tree and making the paper yourself

yeah that would be pretty cool. It probably wouldn't be too hard, either. Just a bit labor intensive

Thanks man! I appreciate this!

>video games in matlab
honestly i would actually do that just for shits and giggles if that didn't imply i'd have to look at that abortion of a language

Been designing games since I was about 8, currently 22.

Design isn't something you can read about and become good at it. You need to learn how to intuit what will make a design good, and when a particular feature will be over-designed. More often than not, a design being good or bad is situational, and much like writing a mathematical proof, is only something you can become good at when you grok it.

The best way to build this intuition is to analyze good games, and analyze what makes them good and fun (two great games I would recommend for this are Yoshi's Island and Super Mario Galaxy 2, or if you want something recent, the new Zelda game). Simultaneously, play bad games, and figure out what makes them not fun. Think about how you could make them fun, if at all. Compare and contrast their designs to your analyses of good games, and you'll start building that intuition.

Meanwhile, dip your toes into frameworks that allow for rapid prototyping. Unity is good and versatile, I don't know much Python but I think there is a framework called PyGame that is pretty good. Game Maker was good at that, but I haven't used it in a very long time, and I dunno how much it's changed in the past decade. Make projects, put them out there, get feedback. No matter what, it's going to take time.

Finally, making games all on your own requires an absurd amount of multi-disciplinary skill. It's great if you can get achieve that, but if you can't, it might be better to just focus on a particular area of design (game logic, sound, level, etc).

go to

If you want a gentle and fun path id recomend the one I took through trail and error
>Get unity
>read manual and online tutorials, there are some books, but most are shit
>learn C#, standard book is C# in a nutshell, but skip all the parts not related to gamedev
>read game programming patterns, dont try and reinvent basic shit the book handles
>read game engine architecture
>read soft material like Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation when bored of programming
>start making small games in unity, try and do as much as possible in code, and not in the editor
>ignore sound, graphics and other shit when you start, focus on making a fun game, then add the sound and graphics later, or in your second game.
>when you start to feel that unity is too limiting, move to monogame, the underlying framework unity uses
>learn monogame from the xna documentation on the internet
>if you did most of your work in code in unity you can easily move to monogame
>read the rest of pic related